A Star Is Born ** (2018, Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Sam Elliott) – Movie Review

A Star Is Born (2018) is a capable piece of film-making and some of it is entertaining but a lot of it is pretty dull, drippy and dreary, surprisingly with Lady Gaga (aka Stefani Germanotta) marginally giving a better acting performance than Bradley Cooper, so it must be a good show case for her. She can sing better than him too, though both of them do quite a lot of shouting into the mics.

To be fair, both Gaga and Cooper put a lot of emotional and dramatic stuff into making what here seems creaky, antique material work again and to be contemporary and relevant. If only it didn’t run so slowly and wasn’t so long! As drama, it does not amount to much, but as a movie though, it could be found likeable, if you like the stars and the music.

Cooper plays a hard-drinking, hard-of-hearing, semi-suicidal rock singer/ guitar playing musician. This is a hard schlep for Cooper, who seems way too capable, too confident and too controlled to persuade in this kind of role – he’s a pleased-with-himself winner kind of guy – though he does get by with a bit of new man kind of acting. However, it is hard to believe that his rock ‘n roll character of Jack Maine would be quite so new man, or as gay friendly.

The film starts improbably with Jack being driven home after a big gig in need of a big drink. He has his car stopped at a random bar, which turns out to be a drag bar. He is pleasantly surprised. Jack is befriended by a nice gay guy, Ramon (Anthony Ramos), and his world is turned upside down when a real woman, Ally (Gaga), comes on stage and performs Edith Paif’s La Vie En Rose. Ramon takes Jack backstage to meet a surprised Ally.

Ally says she likes being one of the gay girls, but Jack has her in his sights and won’t let go of the idea of her. He sends a car to her house to make her go to his next gig and soon they are on stage performing together. Very soon Ally finds her own fame, with the help of a creepy London agent Rez (Rafi Gavron) – hey, the villain is English again! But as Ally’s career takes off, her relationship with Jack is breaking down, as Jack fights his ongoing battle with age, alcohol, deafness and his personal demons, sending his career crashing down and threatening to take hers with him.

Director Bradley Cooper, Eric Roth and Will Fetters make a conscientious job of working over the 1954 screenplay of A Star Is Born by Moss Hart and the 1976 screenplay of A Star Is Born by John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion and Frank Pierson, and the story in the 1937 A Star Is Born by William A Wellman and Robert Carson.

The 2018 screenplay cheekily points out that there are only a dozen notes and a dozen stories, so it it how you do them that counts. That may be true, but Cooper has given himself an insolvable problem trying to remake a story that has so many good versions already, and it is not unkind to say that he cannot top any of the previous versions, entertaining in places though his movie may be.

It is best seen for Gaga, certainly if you are a fan, particularly of her music. Sam Elliott plays Jack’s much older brother Bobby, and he has his effective moments.

Lady Gaga is a staunch supporter of LGBT Rights. Her stage name of Lady Gaga refers to Queen’s song Radio Ga-Ga. On her way up, Gaga go-go danced at bars dressed in a bikini and she toured around Europe and in gay clubs in the US.

A Star Is Born (2018) was nominated for eight Oscars, and won just one – Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song) for the song Shallow by Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando and Andrew Wyatt. It was nominated for five Golden Globes, and won just one – Best Original Song – Motion Picture. It was nominated for seven BAFTA Film Awards, and won just one – Original Music (Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Lukas Nelson).

The 1937 A Star Is Born stars Fredric March and Janet Gaynor.

The 1954 A Star Is Born stars Judy Garland and James Mason.

The 1976 A Star Is Born stars Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson,

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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